A Theology of Politics
Announcements
Maggie: Good morning, good morning. My name's Maggie, I'm part of the table team. It's so good to be together with you and worship together this morning. First things first, I would like to invite our third to fifth graders to go with Brielle and Marta now. If you haven't checked in yet, parents, would you take your children to go check in at the check-in station just on the other side of the wall and then you can write back third to fifth graders. We'll see.
Let's try that again. There we go. We'll see you for communion in just a little bit. Friends, we are starting something new, which is exciting. We are calling it going deeper.
Okay, Tony, you got me? There we go. All right, so we're trying something new. We're calling it going deeper, and it is your opportunity to take the sermon with you into your week to go a little bit deeper with it. The way that we're going to do this is we've got a team of people who are coming up with prompts and discussion questions, and we're going to be doing a weekly sermon, and we're going to be posting it along with the sermon audio online. So if you head out to our website and you look for Recent Services, you can find the Going Deeper questions, and you can do that on your own with your family. You can do it with your small group, but we're going to be doing that each week with this fall series. So we encourage you to take advantage of that.
Next week, it's our excitement, our pleasure, to welcome a friend of ours, Doug Pagitt, to The Table. He's the executive director of an organization called Vote Common Good, and we're so excited to have him back. He'll be with us preaching on Sunday, and then on Monday, they are showing a documentary of his experience biking the borderlands. Down by Mexico, a whole team biked and talked with people who live along the border and their experiences. That documentary is going to show at the--oh, let's not get it wrong. Is it Riverview Theater? Yes. I think that's right. Is there another one that's something View Theater in South Minneapolis? Anyways, the information's online. If you want to see the documentary, that's airing on Monday. So Doug will be here Sunday. If you want to see the documentary, you can see that on Monday.
Then I wanted to let you know that last year, we had this really fun thing where Caitlin and Marta, our director of kids and our pastor of youth, hung out with table families at parks, and it was so much fun last year, we're doing it again this year. So if you have kids and you would like to hang out with other table families at local parks, that's what we're going to be doing. So you can get more details online about that as well.
Now it's Debbie's turn. Come on up, Debbie.
Sermon
Debbie: I don't know what will, because it might not be the message, but it'll certainly be the tech. My name's Debbie. Part of the table team. I'm looking at Maggie right now. We're like, oh my. We'll have a lot to-- Justin a lot to talk about at our team meeting this week. Hey, it's good to be together on this beautiful fall morning. And before I get started, there's one thing I would like to do.
Some of you may or may not know that our board turns over every June 1st with a whole-- some of the returning leaders, some new leaders, but new roles. And this past June 1st, when the board turned over our new president, Chloe Mark-Hendrick went on maternity leave. And for those three months of the summer, one of our board members agreed to stay on, graciously agreed to stay on.
And many of you know Elliot Schmidt. And my wife, Caitlin, is the director of our children's ministry. And I would just love to have Elliot stand up because he has led with grace. (Applause) Elliot, we thank you because you've led with grace and intentionality and just have been fully present in your interim role as president of the board. So we are grateful to you and your service to this community. Thank you.
Well, we continue on in our seven-week series that we are calling "Woven." Justin kicked us off last week. This series we created quite intentionally with the tensions going on in our communities and in our country at this moment. And our faith tradition calls us to this idea that love of God and love of neighbor cannot be separated. You cannot truly love God without loving neighbor. And you can't love your neighbor well without loving God.
And it's a critical time in our country for us to be having these conversations, to be talking about what it means to live out our faith in a way that matters, not just in the private, in our private lives, but in the public sector as well. So Justin kicked us off last week and he was in the book of Matthew reminding us that we are, as human beings, we are one, committed to the common good of all people. And he reminded us of Jesus' words that what you do to the least of me, you do to me.
Sort of a theology of democracy he was talking about. Well today I am tasked with a theology of politics and as the table community, we are committed to practicing the ways of Jesus. So our politics need to be grounded in the person that practices the preaching of Jesus. So it's a Jesus politics that we're going to be looking at today. And when I say politics, I'm not only including like the elected officials or our governmental process, I'm including you and me and the opinions we hold, the decisions we make, the way we live our life in relationship to other people.
And I don't know about you all, but I grew up being taught that politics and religion were never something to be a part of polite conversation. And certainly most often in the church we shouldn't be talking about politics.
I am not sure that that works friends. If we're to live a faithful life, I think we have to be talking about politics.
I learned that lesson, the reality about there in the world the hard way. My husband warned me when last October there was a lot of divisiveness, the chaos and divisiveness that continues maybe even on steroids to this day in our country and in our community. And I decided that I would post something on Facebook. And again, Steve warned me, watch out. And here's what I posted.
I'm rarely, this is October of 2025, I'm rarely on social media and I rarely post. But my heart is broken by the direction and the tone that our country has taken. As a person of faith and a pastor of a church committed to practicing the ways of Jesus, I care deeply about humanity and the dignity of each and every human being. Micah 6-8, he has told you, oh mortal, what is good and what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love kindness and walk humbly with your God.
These are the core requirements of faith to act fairly and righteously, to be compassionate and kind, to live a life of humility. We need to meet this moment. I'm encouraging people who love this country, our democracy, and who care about the flourishing of all people to attend the no kings rallies happening across the state and country.
I didn't think there was anything controversial about that. I actually felt that we could find common ground no matter where you land, because it's not about whether you're Republican or Democrat. It's about following Jesus for us, people of faith.
Well, I was wrong, because here's a little sample of some of the responses I got, and they were from people I know and I love. One person that I worked with in ministry, a younger guy, said, "I'm seeing a number of pastors post things like this. Help me understand. Why are pastors concerned about Caesar? Are pastors at all concerned that the Islamic call to prayer is played over loudspeakers multiple times a day in Minneapolis and St. Paul? What are pastors concerned will happen if people don't protest? To what authority do pastors appeal to regarding kingdom building? Is the state supposed to build kingdom for us or are Christians called to build a separate kingdom?
All political systems are corrupt and lack the values you're reflecting in Micah. Another response from a very dear neighbor that I walked through with him and his family the last days of his wife's death at 49 years old he wrote, "Debbie, you are misguided. No king's protest scheduled against President Donald Trump have drawn support from groups that defend or praise communist dictatorships. It was hard not to feel hurt when I knew that he knew me."
And then another woman wrote, "They're illegals, Debbie. They must enter correctly. This is why we have laws in our society. They're being sent back with grace and kindness if they aren't criminals. A bleeding heart doesn't run the country under our God. Law and order does."
I tell you friends, I hope we all have bleeding hearts because that is the life we are called to. Compassion and mercy for our neighbors. Here's the truth. If we aren't talking about what's going on in our lives, in our communities, and in our country, we are not being faithful. Because we not only need to talk about it, we need to act on the things that Jesus calls us to act on.
And here's the thing we get confused on in our Christian faith, is that somehow God is just personal. Yes, God is personal, but God is never private.
Jim Wallis is someone I'm a huge fan of. I saw him speak here years ago. He is a pastor, theologian, an author, a political activist, written lots of books. He started Sojourner's magazine. He now is the chair at Georgetown in the Department of Justice. But he says this in his book, [God’s Politics], which I forgot to bring up.
"If God is not personal, there's little meaning to faith. It merely becomes a philosophy or a set of teachings from religious figures who died long ago. Without a personal God, there's no personal dimension of belief. There's no relationship to God, no redemption, no salvation." Thank you, Maggie.
"Grace or forgiveness. There's no spiritual transformation without a personal God and no power that can really change our lives beyond self-improvement. However, that personal God is never private. Restricting God to private space was the great heresy of the 20th century American evangelism. Denying the public God is a denial of biblical faith itself, a rejection of the prophets, the apostles, of Jesus himself. In exclusively, private faith degenerates into a narrow religion, excessively preoccupied with individual and sexual morality, while almost oblivious to the biblical demands for public justice. And in the end, private faith becomes a merely cultural religion, providing the assurance of righteousness for people just like us."
That's the both and of our faith. Our faith has to be both personal and public, because God is always personal and never private, and when we look at scripture, we see a very public God.
And while we've been told that politics isn't an appropriate topic for polite conversation, it cannot be avoided for a faithful conversation, because no matter what politics might mean today, or how it's practiced today, its most basic concern is about the ordering of relationships.
It's about people and the way we live together and how we get along, and those same concerns are central to the practice of our faith. And God has something to say about how we live and the way we relate to one another.
I want to say this for clarity. God is not a Democrat, God is not a Republican, God does not have like a partisan legion, or he's not ideological. And this is important. Any claims of divine appointment or uncritical affirmation of policy, assertions that all Christians must vote for a certain candidate, it's bad theology, and it's dangerous, dangerous religion. Justin and I have had this talk because guess what, friends? It happens out there. There are people in authority, there are pastors that stand up front and say, "If you're a real Christian, you are going to vote for this person."
I'm telling you, if it is horrifying to think that we would ever tell you how you should vote, that's not our job. Not our job at all. So I think it's important for us to keep that in mind, because politics don't shape our faith, our faith should shape our politics. And are we, are we people that are open to letting the politics of Jesus challenge and critique and maybe even influence our personal politics?
Because Jesus' politics have implications for our lives, the way we live in relationship, the way we engage in community, and the way we vote. We're talking about a politics that is driven, that is led, that is inspired by the Holy Spirit, the life of God.
Now Jesus, I'd said this before, his political identity, it doesn't begin with party affiliation or constituents. It starts with his baptism. He was immersed in the waters of creation. The heavens opened up and the Spirit descended upon him, and a voice from heaven declared, "You are my Son, my beloved, who I am well pleased." And from there he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where he overcame the great temptations, those same temptations that corrupt our politics today. Materialism, power, self-interest. And in the wilderness, Jesus claimed his identity. He refined, he clarified his message, his direction of his life. And he left the wilderness, and that's where our text picks up today.
We are in the book of Luke, chapter 4:14-21:
Then Jesus and the power of the Spirit returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. He began to teach in their synagogues, and was praised by everyone.
When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He then rolled the scroll, and found the place where it was written.
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him, and then he began to say to them, "Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."
Those words from the prophet Isaiah and the comments from Jesus, you know those are the first recorded words of Jesus's public ministry? And when Jesus chose the text from Isaiah 61 to read in his temple, what he was doing was announcing his mission. This is why he came. For this. The first public words out of his mouth, his first sermon, his opening gig, his mission statement. That's what these words from the prophet Isaiah that Jesus was stating, was preaching more about.
And those words describe the politics of Jesus. Good news to the poor. Release to the captives, sight to the blind. Letting the oppressed go free. Declaring God's favor. These are the building blocks of Jesus's politics, and they have to be the building blocks of our own politics. It's not a campaign promise, but a present reality that we know in Jesus.
Today, Jesus says, "This scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." He's not just outlining his politics, he's describing the character of his ministry. He's establishing his priorities, the direction of his work. He's casting a vision for reordering relationships.
And from here on out, everything that Jesus does will be grounded in the politics of good news, of release, of sight, of freedom, of divine favor. And we see it throughout the scriptures, because politics was revealed in healing the sick, casting out the demons, defeating the hungry, raising the dead.
And at the heart of Jesus's politics, there's an unspoken and ever-present question: Where does it hurt? As followers of Jesus, we hold the conviction that faith has public consequences. And our primary calling as the community of God is not to serve a political party. Instead, it's to bear witness in the way we live our lives to the kingdom of God.
And that's a way of life marked by justice and mercy and reconciliation and peace and the dignity of each and every person.
I think the question for us today is how does the life and teachings of Jesus shape the way we participate in public life? I don't think we say that out loud very much in the church, but I think we have to.
We saw that up close and personal this last winter and spring with Metro Surge. And I know for all of us in this community, while we are not perfect people and we are still aspiring to practice the ways of Jesus, so I don't know that we all felt more proud not just to be a Minnesota, a Minnesotan, to be a Minneapolis, but to be a community that stood up and stood with and dug in and did the loving, self-sacrificing work of partnering with our neighbors.
That's what a life looks like when we follow Jesus. And we've talked about it before, feeding apartment buildings full of people who couldn't go out in Naomi. And Kevin, with your work with the homelessness and this church with our Park Place partners and buying and packing and delivering groceries and driving neighbors, kids to school and driving workers to work who couldn't, who couldn't. And we risk driving themselves over and over again.
This community showed up and participated in the life that God calls us to in our community. Jesus consistently stood by those who are marginalized. He challenged religious and political systems. We can't ignore that.
And those were systems that oppressed people. He confronted wealth and power when it harmed people. He proclaimed good news to the poor and he taught love of enemies, nonviolence, forgiveness and radical hospitality. And so our politics need to be measured by whether it reflects the values of God's kingdom, not whether it advances. Christian cultural power. And here's what that looks like, friends.
Our politics should reflect our core tenant, not just ours, our Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters too. The core tenant that every human being is created in the image of God and every person possesses inherent dignity and worth.
And that means we're committed to racial justice. That means we're committed to LGBTQ plus inclusion, immigrant and refugee protection, disability justice, gender equality, economic systems that honor human flourishing and criminal justice reform. Because a life without justice is empty. And justice is not to be defined or understood as charity, but is addressing the structures that produce the poverty, the violence, the exclusion.
Our love of neighbor, it has to care about and question and engage in the questions of healthcare and housing and education and climate change. Immigration, labor practices, war, voting rights.
And we have to do all of that publicly rather than treating faith as merely something private. Creation itself and climate care becomes a theological issue. It's not just a science issue, not a political one. Climate justice. It's about caring for our environment and caring for those who suffer the most from environmental degradation.
But ultimately, a Christian theology of politics understands political engagement as one expression of discipleship. The goal never being to win politics or to establish a Christian state, but to participate in the work that God is doing in healing the world by pursuing justice, practicing mercy, loving our enemies, welcoming strangers, caring for creation, protecting the dignity of each and every person. And our distinctive witness. It's not found in seeking power for our own sake, but embodying the self-giving love that's been revealed in Jesus.
Look at the world and read the news and reflect on our life, and it's not hard to see that we need a new kind of politics. Each of those is a story in which someone is hurting, someone is poor, captive, blind, oppressed, in need of divine favor. Because those are stories of pain and hurt. And sometimes they're our own personal stories.
But the beauty is that Jesus' politics are large and they're encompassing. And this is what I love the most. No one. No one gets left out. There's no conditions or qualifiers on his politics. And the divine favor, it knows no boundaries. It has no favorites. And it doesn't matter to Jesus who you are or what you've done or what you've left undone or what your life is like.
It's really pretty simple. Are you poor? Good news for you. Are you captive? Release for you. Are you blind? Sight to you. Are you oppressed? Go in freedom. Divine favor is not given to the poor or the captive or the blind or the oppressed because they're good or righteous. It's given because God. God is good and righteous. So what if we all adopt Jesus' politics? His political platform is our own.
What if we begin our own political thinking, our conversations by asking where does it hurt? Or maybe this, what's breaking your heart? What if we enter these divisive, these very difficult situations with that question? What if we let that question establish our own priorities and guide our decisions? Let's not let the scripture from today go in one ear and out the other because the challenge for us is recovering the faith of the prophets and of Jesus. It's not just about politics. It's about the way we live, both in our personal life and our communal life.
The question is how are we going to live a faith that manifests itself in compassion and whose public expression is justice? How are we raising our children?
At the end of the day, it's not religion nor secular fundamentalism that's going to save us, but it's a spiritual revival. It's that that's going to ignite something in us that's going to awaken our humanity, this deep social conscious that transforms our communities, our country, our world. Because movements do change history. You just have to look at the civil rights movement that was founded in the church. And those movements that change history, the strongest ones have always been those with the spiritual foundation.
And I think most of all, most important for us in this moment in time is the spiritual power of hope because we all need that right now. We're going to claim that hope that we have in Jesus. I see it in our kids too.
And I wanted to show you a video that out of the mouth of babes that sometimes our six year olds get it better than the rest of us. Take a look.
[video of little girl] Hello. We're going to learn about why did God why because love people, love your neighbors, love everyone. It's because then you're being kind. Kind means that it's like you're helping out.
Helping out means like you're doing something for someone. Something that people do to make people happy when they're sad or frustrated or something that's really sad. You want to step up and help them. Like if someone's being mean to them, we should step up. Do what's right. Nothing can stop us. That's what today's learning.
Amen. If that's the only thing that you take from today's message, write on because I think she's right on.
I'm going to end with just a few words from Jim Wallis’s book, God's Politics. I think it's a good way to end the message today. Jim talks about a young woman that he was one of the best street workers that he had ever met. She worked in the streets of Washington DC with urban youth. Her name was Lisa Sullivan and she died at 40 years old of a rare heart disease.
And this is what Jim says:
Lisa's legacy is continuing through countless young people whom she inspired, challenged and mentored. But there's one thing she often said to them and to all of us that has stayed with me since Lisa died.
When people would complain, as they often do, that we don't have any leaders today or would ask where the Martin Luther King's are now, Lisa would get angry.
We are the ones we've been waiting for. She would declare Lisa was a person of faith and hers was a powerful call to leadership and responsibility and a deep affirmation of hope.
It's a calling the prophets knew, a lesson learned by every person of faith and conscious who has conscience, who has been used to build movements of spiritual and social change. It's a calling that is quite consistent with the virtue of humility because it's not about taking ourselves too seriously, but rather about taking the commission seriously. It's a commission that can only be fulfilled by our very human beings, by people who because of faith and hope believe that the world can be changed.
And it is that very belief that changes the world. And if not us, who will believe? After all, we are the ones we've been waiting for.
That's the call. Amen. (Applause)
Words of Institution
Justin: Jesus came with good news, good news to the poor, good news to the oppressed, good news to the marginalized. Those who are blind could see. Jesus' ministry was actually liberating for people that Jesus came into contact with. And I think today in the church, we've spiritualized things so much to the point where we barely acknowledge the tangible ways so often that Jesus stepped in and helped people and freed people. And in that, we've forgotten our call in the church to be people who not only bring spiritual good news, but people who bring tangible and liberating good news. The spiritual and the tangible are woven together too. And so perhaps that's the perspective that we can have as we come to this table this morning.
Whether you are poor in spirit or you are poor financially, whether you are oppressed in a spiritual way this morning or you're being kicked while you're already down by those in power, there is good news for you at this table.
Hope and healing can start here and a love for you and your neighbor can start here for you to experience and to share with others. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it.
He said, "This is my body given for you. Take and eat in remembrance of me." And in the same way, after the supper, he took the cup and said, "This is the blood of my new covenant. As often as you drink of it, drink in remembrance of me." So as we prepare to come forward, just a few logistical reminders for you. You'll see an orange tape line in the aisles. If you are in front of that orange tape line, you'll come forward to this station. If you are behind the orange tape line, you'll go to the station in the back. We practice intention here at the table, so you'll take gluten-free bread, dip it into the cup, consume it, and then you'll go back to your seat. This morning, if you are in need of prayer, Ann Herman will be in the back corner and she would be happy to pray with you or pray for you in any way that she can this morning. So with that, if you would stand in body or in spirit, and we'll pray together as Jesus taught us, saying, "Our God."